Feds rake in $8.8M from sale of horses

Updated 11:48 pm, Monday, November 5, 2012

Photo: Sue Ogrocki, Associated Press

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FG Rebelde rears up in the show ring before entering the sale ring at the Heritage Place mixed fall sale in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. The horse is one of over 300 horses confiscated by the U.S. Government as alleged assets of a Mexican drug cartel's money laundering operation and being sold at the auction.

FG Rebelde rears up in the show ring before entering the sale ring at the Heritage Place mixed fall sale in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. The horse is one of over 300 horses confiscated by the U.S.

A Dash of Sweet Heat is led into the sales ring by an unnamed Heritage Place employee during the fall mixed sale in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. The horse is one of over 300 horses confiscated by the U.S. Government as alleged assets of a Mexican drug cartel's money laundering operation and being sold at the auction. This horse sold for one million dollars. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

A Dash of Sweet Heat is led into the sales ring by an unnamed Heritage Place employee during the fall mixed sale in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. The horse is one of over 300 horses confiscated by the

A Dash of Sweet Heat pictured in a stall before selling at the Heritage Place fall mixed sale in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012, for one million dollars.The horse is one of over 300 horses confiscated by the U.S. Government as alleged assets of a Mexican drug cartel's money laundering operation and being sold at the auction. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

A Dash of Sweet Heat pictured in a stall before selling at the Heritage Place fall mixed sale in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012, for one million dollars.The horse is one of over 300 horses confiscated by

A Dash of Sweet Heat is led from the sales ring after selling for one million dollars at the Heritage Place fall mixed sale in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. The horse is one of over 300 horses confiscated by the U.S. Government as alleged assets of a Mexican drug cartel's money laundering operation and being sold at the auction. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

A Dash of Sweet Heat is led from the sales ring after selling for one million dollars at the Heritage Place fall mixed sale in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. The horse is one of over 300 horses

More than 300 quarter horses tied to the Zetas drug cartel have been sold by the federal government for $8.8 million.

U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman and Steve McCullough, special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation unit in San Antonio, said in a news release that two-thirds of the horses were sold this weekend at the Heritage Place auction house in Oklahoma City.

Among them was A Dash of Sweet Heat, a broodmare that sold last Thursday for a record $1 million to Julianna Hawn Holt, a co-owner of the San Antonio Spurs. She had sold it a year earlier at public auction for $650,000.

Approximately 100 broodmares were sold prior to auction for $35,000, the news release said.

The government still has possession of about 45 quarter horses, including Tempting Dash, winner of the Dash for Cash at Lone Star Park race track in Grand Prairie in 2009; Mr. Piloto, $1 million All American Futurity winner at Ruidoso Downs, N.M.; Dashin Follies; Separate Fire; and Y516, a yearling seized on Zule Farms in Lexington, Okla.

Those horses are expected to be auctioned or sold at a later date. They are among more than 400 horses, many of them from America's top bloodlines, that were seized in June as part of an investigation into the cartel's money laundering operations.

Pitman said that while the individual defendants in this case will face criminal trial in the spring, the proceeds from the sale of the quarter horses will be held in escrow while a separate civil forfeiture lawsuit is settled in court.